Security Council Oks Force To Enter Congo

February 25, 2000|By Barbara Crossette, New York Times News Service.

NEW YORK — The UN Security Council voted unanimously Thursday to send a heavily armed peace-monitoring mission to Congo, but delayed deploying it until the United Nations can be assured that the force will be safe and that it can operate effectively.

Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. representative, and Andre Kapanga, Congo's ambassador, welcomed the move as a milestone in international efforts to end a widening war. Other diplomats were more cautious.

Holbrooke, who has spent two months forcing the Congo war and other African crises to the top of the Security Council's agenda, said Thursday, "The time has now come to act."

"The council has taken a critical step to help Congo come to a peace it so desperately needs," Holbrooke said in a speech.

No Americans are likely to be involved in the Congo operation, except perhaps to assist with communications and transportation. Troops are being recruited mainly in Africa and Asia.

UN officials expect that it will take months before the force is deployed. Secretary General Kofi Annan has been assigned the job of deciding when the conditions are ready.

Kapanga pledged Congo's renewed support for a July 1999 peace agreement that has never taken hold. He drew attention to steps Congo has taken in recent days to establish a constituent assembly and introduce an amnesty program.

But Kapanga also indicated that the government of President Laurent Kabila continues to view the fighting as what the envoy called a "brutal occupation" by Rwanda and Uganda. He said it can end only with "the withdrawal of hostile foreign armies from our land." But one of the largest foreign forces in Congo is from Zimbabwe, which diplomats say is propping up Kabila's government.

The resolution adopted Thursday expands an existing corps of 80 liaison officers for the region to a peace-monitoring force within Congo of up to 500 people, backed by 1,000 soldiers. Another 4,000-member support staff will assist the mission because the country lacks roads and almost every service industry that would be needed to sustain a deployment of this size. Congo is nearly the size of Europe.

The peacekeeping troops will have no military powers to disarm combatants or involve themselves in large-scale efforts to protect residents. They will only intervene as necessary if violence erupts in areas where they are deployed.

Troops will share headquarters staffs with the joint military commission of African nations that signed the peace agreement in Lusaka, Zambia, last July.

The mission will include civilian specialists in child protection and human rights.